America is not going to the moon. Did the Americans land on the moon?
Massive hype around the American lunar program appeared relatively recently. The first person to raise this sensitive issue was Ralph Rene, who noticed, in his opinion, inaccuracies and “blunders” in photographs taken on the Moon.
I don’t want to question the level of education of some researchers and skeptics, but often the questions that they ask and try to classify as irrefutable evidence of the falsification of the flight to the Moon are simply ridiculous and, according to a number of astrophysicists, are not even worthy of comment due to their stupidity.
Next, we will present the most common arguments of skeptics and try to popularly explain why certain photographs, films and phenomena seem strange or unnatural in outer space.
Further, for convenience of description, we will call those who do not believe in the American flight to the Moon skeptics, and those who claim the opposite - experts. Since all materials for this article are taken from the official chronicle, the authenticity of which is beyond doubt, and the arguments of famous scientists and astronauts, whose professionalism is not questioned, are presented as evidence.
1 Argument: Neil Armstrong's trail
Skeptics' opinion
The photograph shows a clear, sharp trace left by the boot of the spacesuit, although it is known that there is no water in any form on the Moon. Consequently, it is not possible to leave a trace of such a clear and regular shape. This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
The behavior of lunar soil is no different from the behavior of wet sand on Earth, but this is due to completely different physical reasons. Earth's sand consists of grains of sand, polished to a round shape by the winds, so such a clear trace cannot remain on dry sand.
There is an electron wind on the Moon, the protons of which turn particles of lunar dust into stars, which do not slide over each other like grains of sand, but, interlocking with each other, form an impression - in this case, a clear trace, the structure of which is strengthened by the molecular penetration of particles into each other due to the vacuum . Such a trace could remain on the Moon for millions of years.
To prove the above, a photograph taken from the Soviet lunar rover is provided, which clearly shows that the footprints have the same clear shapes as the imprint of an American astronaut's boot.
2 Argument: Shadows
Skeptics' opinion
There is only one source of light on the Moon - the Sun. Therefore, the shadows of the astronauts and their equipment should fall in the same direction. In the above photograph, two astronauts are standing next to each other, therefore the angle of incidence of the Sun is the same, but the shadows they cast are of different lengths and directions.
It turns out that they were illuminated from above by a spotlight. That is why one shadow is 1.5 measures larger than the other, since, as everyone knows, the further a person stands from a street lamp, the longer the shadow. And who took the picture anyway, since both astronauts are in the frame. This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
As for the photo. It is not a photograph. This is a fragment of video recording from a camera installed in the lunar module and operating autonomously without astronauts on board.
As for the shadow, the point is the uneven surface creating the effect of a certain elongation. The clarity of the shadows is given by the absence of an atmosphere that should diffuse the light.
Skeptics' opinion
In the above photographs, something incomprehensible is happening with the shadows. In the photo on the left, the sun is shining in the photographer’s back, and the shadow from the module falls to the left. In the right photo, the shadow from the stones falls to the right as if the illumination is coming from the left, and closer to the left edge of the photo this strange effect loses its strength. This unusual behavior of shadows cannot be attributed to surface unevenness.
Expert opinion
Correctly noted. Irregularities alone cannot create such an effect, but coupled with perspective it is possible. The photo on the right is specially superimposed with an image of rails which, by analogy with the stones on the Moon, also “suffer from left deviation”, although we know for sure that the rails run parallel to each other, otherwise how would trains run on them. The same optical illusion of connecting rails closer to the horizon is known; a similar illusion is also present in lunar photographs.
3 Argument: Glare
Skeptics' opinion
In the above photograph you can clearly see that the sun is behind the astronaut, which means that the part facing the camera should be in the shadow, but in fact it is illuminated by some kind of device.
Expert opinion
It's all about the lunar surface, which, due to the lack of an atmosphere, receives 100% of the light and scatters it much stronger than on Earth, so much stronger that on a moonlit night we on Earth can read a book without additional lighting. This photograph shows that a significant part of the reflected light hit the astronaut’s spacesuit and was even reflected again on the surface, creating the effect of a shadow being illuminated.
Skeptics' opinion
In many photographs you can see incomprehensible white spots, similar to the light of spotlights. This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
The fact is that direct sunlight hits the lens, creating glare. In the above photo you can clearly see that the Sun is above the frame, and, therefore, the reflection of the glare will be in a straight line from the center of the frame. Which is exactly what we are observing.
4 Argument: Background
Skeptics' opinion
Different photos have the same background. In the two photos above, the background is the same. What is this? Scenery?
Expert opinion
This feeling occurs due to the lack of atmosphere on the Moon. Objects, and in this case high-altitude mountains, seem to be located closely, although they are at least 10 kilometers away. If you look closely, the mountains on the right photo are different from those on the left. Since the right photo was taken 2 kilometers from the lunar module.
Skeptics' opinion
In many photographs there is a clear boundary between the foreground and the background of the mountains. What is this if not decoration?
Expert opinion
This effect arises from the fact that the size of the Moon is four times smaller than that of Earth. Because of this, the horizon (surface curvature) is only a couple of kilometers from the observer, so it seems that the high mountains are as if separated by an even line from the lunar surface.
5 Argument: Lack of stars
Skeptics' opinion
The absence of stars in the sky proves that the photographs are fake. This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
Each camera has a sensitivity threshold. There are no cameras that could simultaneously capture the bright surface of the Moon and the dim stars in comparison. If you photograph the surface of the Moon, then no stars will be visible, but if you photograph the stars, then the surface of the Moon will look like a single white spot.
6 Argument: It is impossible to shoot on the Moon
Skeptics' opinion
As far as is known, there are very strong temperature changes on the surface of the Moon in the range of 200 degrees. How did the film not melt during shooting?
Expert opinion
- The landing site for the lunar module was chosen so that a short time would pass after sunrise and the surface would not become hot.
- The Americans made the film on a special heat-resistant base that softens only at a temperature of 90 degrees and melts at 260.
- In a vacuum, heat can be transferred only in one way, radiation. Therefore, the chambers were covered with a reflective layer that removes the main heat.
- The Americans flew to the Moon in 1969, and back in 1959, the domestic automatic station was already transmitting photographs of the lunar surface without any obstacles.
7 Argument: Flag
Skeptics' opinion
During the installation of the flag, it can be seen that it wrinkles and sways in the wind, although it is known that there is no atmosphere on the Moon.
Expert opinion
Actually, there were two flags planted on the moon. The first is the national flag of the USA, and the second is the NATO flag, emphasizing the international nature of the expedition. The US flag was made of nylon and mounted on telescopic consoles.
During installation, the horizontal crossbar did not extend all the way, as a result of which the flag was not fully stretched, so the astronaut even had to pull it to straighten it. As a result of the lack of full tension at temperature, the nylon began to warp until it warmed up to a certain temperature, and due to the pulling of the flag, its oscillations did not die out like terrestrial ones in calm weather, since in a vacuum the pendulum swings much longer in the absence of air friction. This is where the myth of the flag fluttering in the wind was born.
8 Argument: Funnel and engine flame
Skeptics' opinion
At the time of landing and launch, a crater should have formed under the lunar module, and during the launch, the engine flames were not visible. This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
As for the funnel. The bearing capacity of a 10-centimeter layer of the lunar surface is about 0.3-0.7 newtons per square meter. see. When landing and maneuvering on the surface, the module engine operates in low thrust mode. That is, the gas pressure on the surface is not significant. At landing it is generally less than 0.1 atmosphere. During takeoff, a little more, but given the hardness of the Moon’s soil, this pressure is only enough to blow away the dust.
Since the calculated pressure from the starting stage nozzle to the surface is 0.6 newtons per square meter. cm. The soil completely compensated for the takeoff of the lunar module, leaving only a light spot of crushed soil. As for the engine flames, we repeat, the thrust during takeoff is very small and amounts to no more than a ton.
The fuel used in Apollo, aerosin-50 and nitrogen tetroxide, is practically transparent when burning, so with the highly refreshed surface of the Moon, its glow would hardly be enough to significantly illuminate the shadow of the module or to capture it with a camera.
10 Argument: Lunomobile
Skeptics' opinion
When astronauts move on the surface, the sound of the lunarmobile engine is clearly audible, but, as is known, sound cannot be transmitted in airless space. Another interesting fact is that the soil from under the wheels in a vacuum should rise up several meters, and it behaves in the same way as when driving on sand on Earth.
Expert opinion
Sound can be transmitted not only through air, but also through hard substances. In this case, vibration from the engine is transmitted along the frame of the lunar vehicle to the spacesuit, and from the spacesuit to the astronaut’s microphone.
As for the ejection of soil from under the wheels of the lunar vehicle, on the Moon, contrary to expectations, it does not rise in the form of a dust cloud due to the slight acceleration of the dust particles tending to zero at the moment of contact of the wheels with the lunar soil. The same dust particles that are accelerated by the parts of the wheels that are not in contact with the surface are extinguished by the wings installed on the lunar vehicle.
Moreover, under earthly conditions, dust from the same trip would swirl behind the car for a long time. In airless space, it falls as quickly as it takes off. This is clearly visible in the moments when the wheels of the lunar vehicle “slip”.
11 Argument: Protection from radiation and solar flares
Skeptics' opinion
I wonder how the Americans managed to protect themselves from radiation and solar flares on the Moon? And in general, how did they manage to bypass the famous Van Allen belt, where radiation reaches 1000 roentgens? After all, to protect against such radiation, meter-high lead walls of the shuttle are required. And how did ordinary rubberized American spacesuits protect astronauts from radiation and solar flares on the Moon? This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
Indeed, when launching automatic stations in near-Earth orbit, belts with a large accumulation of radioactive particles attracted by the Earth’s magnetic field were discovered. They were later called the Van Allen Belt. Such a large radiation background was not detected on the Moon due to the absence of an atmosphere and the small size of the Moon.
Before launching Apollo, automatic reconnaissance aircraft with radiation sensors were sent multiple times along the intended flight paths in order to determine the optimal course. It turned out that the maximum background radiation is only above the Earth's equator; closer to the poles it is many times lower. Therefore, the Apollo trajectories were chosen as close as possible to the poles. Since the astronauts passed them in just a few hours, this level of radiation could not cause damage to human health and was equal to approximately 1 rad.
Regarding American spacesuits, to say that they had no protection means making a grave mistake. American spacesuits of that time consisted of 25 layers of various materials to protect the astronaut. Such a suit weighed about 80 kg on Earth and 13 on the Moon and was quite capable of protecting the astronaut from falls, micrometeorites, vacuum, solar radiation and radiation within reasonable limits.
As for solar flares with a huge release of radiation, this was a truly dangerous phenomenon, but predictable. NASA conducted careful observations of the Sun and forecast solar flares and storms.
Moreover, during a flare, the Sun does not emit radiation in all directions, but in a narrow beam, the direction of which can also be predicted. Of course, there was some risk for the astronauts in this regard. Perhaps the forecast is not correct, but the degree of this risk was very small. In general, in the entire history of Apollo flights from December 1968 to December 1972, only 3 flares occurred on August 2, 4 and 7, 1972, and only those that were predicted. As we know from history, no one flew to the moon at that time.
12 Argument: Interview with Stanley Kubrick's widow
Skeptics' opinion
In 2003, the widow of director Stanley Kubrick said that her husband filmed the lunar footage on behalf of the US government. Moreover, there is a video on the Internet where, during filming on the Moon, a lighting device falls on an astronaut and suddenly, out of nowhere, personnel appear and help the astronaut. This is irrefutable evidence of falsification.
Expert opinion
Indeed, in 2003, the film “Dark Side of the Moon” was released, which contained a lot of interviews with prominent people of that time who told how the lunar program was filmed in the pavilions of film companies. Among everyone, the widow of Stanley Kubrick spoke and said that the film was directed personally by her husband at the request of President Nixon.
In fact, this film was made in 2002 using real lunar footage taken by astronauts during the first flight to the Moon. Much was added to this film from the chronicle of the astronauts' training on Earth, and other soundtracks were superimposed on many frames, and some of the interviews were compiled using phrases taken from the content of previously recorded interviews.
The creators of this film do not hide its falsity at all. It was filmed only to shake up the public and show that you shouldn’t believe everything you see. It was released in Canada and France. Many yellow media from different countries, without really understanding what was what, presented all this in the form of a loud sensation revealing the falsification of flights to the Moon.
To be fair, it should be said that in the event of the failure of the mission, a story was indeed created, but not in the Hollywood pavilions with the successful completion of the expedition, but on ordinary television with Nixon’s funeral speech about the dead astronauts.
The famous video of the astronaut being hit by the spotlight first appeared on the website www.moontruth.com in late 2002. The site's authors claimed to have received this recording from an anonymous person who feared for his life. These shots completely reveal the truth about the most expensive show of the 20th century. Many believed this video and still do. Although after a few months the site owners stated that this was nothing more than an advertising video for their film company.
An additional page with the interesting title “Here you can read why everything said above is bullshit”, which appeared on the same site, detailed how this small English film company filmed this video as a promotion for their company.
13 Argument: Lack of evidence received from Earth
Skeptics' opinion
Why don't the Americans, as evidence that they were on the Moon, photograph the remaining equipment on the Moon using a telescope directly from Earth? This is what those who do not believe whether the Americans flew to the Moon say.
Expert opinion
Today there is simply no telescope powerful enough to photograph the American lunar modules. By astronomical standards they are very small. The distance to the Moon is 350 thousand kilometers. The Earth's atmosphere is a serious obstacle to high-quality photographs.
If we assume that there is a telescope on Earth with a lens radius of 50 meters in diameter (and today the largest telescope is only 10.8 meters), then the surface that it will be able to photograph relatively clearly will be much larger than the size of the lunar modules. That is, we won’t see them anyway.
There is a second reason why NASA will not engage in such nonsense. There are many instruments left on the Moon, the operation of which is recorded, and data is received from the Moon to Earth, which in itself is irrefutable evidence that the Americans were on the Moon and installed there Laser reflectors, a seismometer, an ion detector and an ionization pressure gauge.
As we can see from all of the above, only an amateur can ask the question: “Did the Americans fly to the moon?” All the hype related to falsification is nothing more than rumors fueled by pseudo-experts whose knowledge in this area is clearly small.
Here we consider only those questions that have at least some intelligible justification, but we decided not to even consider the other part of the absurd arguments posed by people who are clearly far from understanding physics, optics and astrophysics in the format of this article since there is a 100% probability of their scientific explanation .
As for some oddities in photographs that are not related to physical laws, but rather to exposure, we will fully answer this question in the article “
Each nation individually and all of humanity as a whole strives only forward to conquer new horizons in the field of economic development, medicine, sports, science, new technologies, including the study of astronomy and space exploration. We hear about big breakthroughs in space exploration, but did they really happen? Did the Americans land on the moon or was it just one big show?
Spacesuits
Having visited the “US National Air and Space Museum” in Washington, anyone can verify that the American spacesuit is a very simple robe, hastily sewn. NASA states that the spacesuits were sewn at a factory for the production of bras and underwear, that is, their spacesuits were made from the fabric of underpants and they supposedly protect from the aggressive space environment, from radiation that is deadly to humans. However, maybe NASA really has developed ultra-reliable suits that protect against radiation. But why then was this ultra-light material not used anywhere else? Not for military purposes, not for peaceful purposes. Why was no assistance provided with Chernobyl, albeit for money, as American presidents like to do? Okay, let’s say perestroika hasn’t started yet and they didn’t want to help the Soviet Union. But, for example, in 1979 in the USA, a terrible reactor unit accident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. So why didn’t they use durable spacesuits developed using NASA technology to eliminate radiation contamination - a time bomb on their territory?
Radiation from the sun is harmful to humans. Radiation is one of the main obstacles in space exploration. For this reason, even today all manned flights take place no further than 500 kilometers from the surface of our planet. But the Moon has no atmosphere and the level of radiation is comparable to outer space. For this reason, both in a manned spacecraft and in a spacesuit on the surface of the Moon, astronauts had to receive a lethal dose of radiation. However, they are all alive.
Neil Armstrong and the other 11 astronauts lived an average of 80 years, and some are still living, like Buzz Aldrin. By the way, back in 2015 he honestly admitted that he had never been to the moon.
It is interesting to know how they were able to survive so well when a small dose of radiation is enough to develop leukemia - blood cancer. As we know, none of the astronauts died from cancer, which raises only questions. Theoretically, it is possible to protect yourself from radiation. The question is what protection would be sufficient for such a flight. Engineers' calculations show that to protect astronauts from cosmic radiation, the walls of the ship and spacesuit needed to be at least 80 cm thick and made of lead, which, naturally, was not the case. No rocket can lift such weight.
The suits were not just hastily riveted together, but they lacked simple things necessary for life support. Thus, the spacesuits used in the Apollo program completely lack a system for removing waste products. The Americans either endured it with plugs in different places throughout the entire flight, without peeing or pooping. Or they immediately recycled everything that came out of them. Otherwise, they would simply suffocate from their excrement. This does not mean that the system for removing waste products was bad - it was simply absent.
Astronauts walked on the moon in rubber boots, but it is interesting to know how they did it when the temperature on the moon ranges from +120 to -150 degrees Celsius. How did they obtain the information and technology to make shoes that could withstand wide ranges of temperatures? After all, the only material that has the necessary properties was discovered after the flights and began to be used in production only 20 years after the first landing on the Moon.
Official chronicle
The vast majority of space images from NASA's lunar program do not show stars, although Soviet space images have an abundance of them. The black empty background in all the photographs is explained by the fact that there were difficulties with modeling the starry sky and NASA decided to completely abandon the sky in its photographs. When the US flag was planted on the moon, the flag fluttered under the influence of air currents. Armstrong straightened the flag and took a few steps back. However, the flag did not stop fluttering. The American flag fluttered with the wind, although we know that in the absence of an atmosphere and in the absence of wind as such, a flag cannot flutter on the Moon. How could astronauts move so quickly on the Moon if gravity is 6 times lower than on Earth? An accelerated view of astronauts jumping on the Moon shows that their movements correspond to movements on Earth, and the height of the jumps does not exceed the height of jumps in Earth's gravity. You can also find fault with the pictures themselves for a long time regarding the differences in colors and minor mistakes.
Lunar soil
During the lunar missions under the Apollo program, a total of 382 kg of lunar soil was delivered to Earth, and samples of the soil were presented by the American government to leaders of different countries. True, all regolith, without exception, turned out to be a fake of terrestrial origin. Part of the soil mysteriously simply disappeared from museums; another part of the soil, after chemical analysis, turned out to be terrestrial basalt or meteorite fragments. Thus, BBC News reported that a fragment of lunar soil stored in the Dutch museum Rijskmuseulm turned out to be a piece of petrified wood. The exhibit was given to Dutch Prime Minister Willem Dries and after his death the regolith went to the museum. Experts doubted the authenticity of the stone back in 2006. This suspicion was finally confirmed by an analysis of lunar soil carried out by specialists from the Free University of Amsterdam; the expert conclusion was not reassuring: the piece of stone is a fake. The American government decided not to comment on this situation in any way and simply hushed up the matter. Similar cases also occurred in the countries of Japan, Switzerland, China and Norway. And such embarrassments were resolved in the same way, the regoliths mysteriously either disappeared or were destroyed by fire or the destruction of museums.
One of the main arguments of opponents of the lunar conspiracy is the recognition by the Soviet Union of the fact of the Americans landing on the moon. Let's analyze this fact in more detail. The United States understood perfectly well that it would not be difficult for the Soviet Union to make a refutation and provide evidence that the Americans never landed on the moon. And there was plenty of evidence, including material evidence. This is the analysis of lunar soil, which was transferred by the American side, and this is the Apollo-13 apparatus caught in the Bay of Biscay in 1970 with full telemetry of the launch of the Saturn-5 launch vehicles, in which there was not a single living soul, there was not a single astronaut. On the night of April 11-12, the Soviet fleet lifted the Apollo 13 capsule. In fact, the capsule turned out to be an empty zinc bucket, there was no thermal protection at all, and its weight was no more than one ton. The rocket was launched on April 11 and a few hours later on the same day, the Soviet military found the capsule in the Bay of Biscay.
And according to the official chronicle, the American spacecraft circled the Moon and returned to Earth supposedly on April 17, as if nothing had happened. At that time, the Soviet Union received irrefutable evidence that the Americans had faked the moon landing, and it had a fat ace up its sleeve.
But then amazing things began to happen. At the height of the Cold War, when a bloody war was going on in Vietnam, Brezhnev and Nixon, as if nothing had happened, met like good old friends, smiled, clinked glasses, and drank champagne together. This is remembered in history as the Brezhnev Thaw. How can we explain the completely unexpected friendship between Nixon and Brezhnev? Apart from the fact that the Brezhnev thaw began quite unexpectedly, behind the scenes, there were gorgeous gifts that President Nixon personally gave to Ilyich Brezhnev. So, on his first visit to Moscow, the American president brings Brezhnev a generous gift - a Cadillac Eldorado, hand-assembled by special order. I wonder for what merits at the highest level Nixon gives an expensive Cadillac at the first meeting? Or maybe the Americans were indebted to Brezhnev? And then - more. At subsequent meetings, Brezhnev is given a Lincoln limousine, and then a sporty Chevrolet Monte Carlo. At the same time, the silence of the Soviet Union about the American lunar scam could hardly be bought with a luxury car. The USSR demanded to pay big. Can it be considered a coincidence that in the early 70s, when the Americans allegedly landed on the moon, the construction of the largest giant, the KAMAZ automobile plant, began in the Soviet Union. It is interesting that the West allocated billions of dollars in loans for this construction, and several hundred American and European automobile companies took part in the construction. There were dozens of other projects in which the West, for such inexplicable reasons, invested in the economy of the Soviet Union. Thus, an agreement was concluded on the supply of American grain to the USSR at prices below the world average, which negatively affected the well-being of the Americans themselves.
The embargo on Soviet oil supplies to Western Europe was also lifted, and we began to penetrate their gas market, where we are still successfully operating to this day. Apart from the fact that the United States allowed such profitable business with Europe, the West, in fact, built these pipelines itself. Germany provided a loan of more than 1 billion marks to the Soviet Union and supplied large-diameter pipes, which at that time were not produced in our country. Moreover, the nature of warming demonstrates a clear one-sidedness. The US is doing favors for the Soviet Union while getting nothing in return. Amazing generosity, which can easily be explained by the price of silence about the fake moon landing.
By the way, recently the famous Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who everywhere defends the Americans in their version of the flight to the Moon, confirmed that the landing was filmed in the studio. Indeed, who will film the epoch-making opening of the hatch by the first man on the moon if there is no one on the moon?
Busting the myth that Americans walked on the moon is not just an insignificant fact. No. The element of this illusion is interconnected with all the world's deceptions. And when one illusion begins to collapse, the rest of the illusions begin to collapse after it, like a domino principle. It is not only misconceptions about the greatness of the United States of America that are crumbling. Added to this is the misconception about the confrontation between states. Would the USSR play along with its irreconcilable enemy in the lunar scam? It's hard to believe, but, unfortunately, the Soviet Union played the same game with the United States. And if this is so, then it now becomes clear to us that there are forces that control all these processes that are above the states.
Questions, questions...
Friends from Kyiv sent me an American film from the Island World studio "For all mankind"("For all mankind" - with polyphonic translation into Russian), directed by Al Reinert, released in 1989 to mark the 20th anniversary of the landing on the moon by the first people - American astronauts N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin. The film raises a lot of questions, even without watching it.
"For All Mankind", full NASA movie (1989)
(without translation into Russian - in English)
For example, why is the Soviet audience not familiar with him? Why were this and the next anniversary films never shown on our television? Let’s say that it was not shown in the USSR for ideological reasons, but already under Gorbachev we opened the doors to the propaganda of our older, pale-faced brother. Why did US agitprop never insist that its main achievement - the landing on the moon - be promoted in the conquered country?
Long road
A few general numbers. This supposed documentary about the first men on the moon runs 75 minutes. After about half an hour, you will definitely start swearing: when will the moon finally appear? The fact is that the landing on the Moon and everything else about the astronauts’ stay on the Moon (all of them, not just Armstrong and Aldrin) take up only about 25 minutes in the film, and the filming on the Moon is about 20.5 minutes, and the astronauts themselves there are less than 19 minutes. You will agree that this is not much, if you consider that, according to legend, the astronauts of all expeditions spent about 400 hours on the Moon.
You ask: But what do the first 50 minutes show in the film? Whatever!
How astronauts dress before launch, how they are examined, how they walk, how they are lifted onto the ship, how they take off, how they admire the view of the Canary Islands from space, how they change clothes, how they eat, how they shave with an electric razor, how they throw objects suspended in zero gravity, how they sleep, again how they eat, again how they shave, although now with a safety razor. How they listen to music on an audio player, what kind of music it is, what the musicians said when they recorded it, etc. and so on. Since there is nowhere to rush, they show how the astronauts jokingly make a video about themselves, how they draw screensavers for it; these screensavers (4 or 5), of course, are necessarily shown to the audience. As astronauts broadcast a comic TV report about sports news from space, the scores of basketball league matches are broadcast. Etc. and so on. And all this with sparkling American humor. For example, they make fun jokes showing how the astronauts recover (it is explained in detail that bags with excrement must be tightly closed with lids, otherwise the excrement will stick all over the cabin). When one goes to recover, the others put on oxygen masks, making faces, letting the audience know that it stinks a lot. Funny. In general, there is an abyss of humor in the abyss of space. American.
To keep the audience from getting too bored, an accident is staged: “a leak of liquid oxygen in the service compartment where oxygen for the crew’s breathing is stored.” This liquid oxygen is shown gushing out like a fountain. For some reason, at the control center they look at something that looks like a battery and give a cheerful command: “Try plans No. 4 and No. 3.” At this command, the astronaut grabs a roll of tape and quickly seals something with it, brilliantly saving the lives of the crew.
The audience is not deprived of original views, but first a few words about the structure of the Apollo spacecraft. It is launched into Earth orbit by two stages of the Saturn rocket, and the third stage accelerates it towards the Moon. Apollo itself consists of a main block, which contains the crew cabin and engine. In this cabin, astronauts fly to the Moon and return to Earth. The main block engine slows down Apollo at the Moon and accelerates it to return to Earth. The lunar cabin is docked to the main block engines, in which two astronauts descend to the Moon and return to the main block. A landing platform is docked to the lunar cabin on the side of its engine, the engine of which lands the platform and the lunar cabin on the surface of the Moon. (The lunar cabin then launches from this platform).
Saturn 5 launch vehicle"
1. Emergency rescue system (ESS).
2. Apollo crew compartment
3. The engine compartment of the Apollo spacecraft.
4. Lunar cabin of the Apollo spacecraft.
5. Lunar platform.
6. Equipment compartment.
7. Third stage (S-4B rocket).
8. J-2 engine.
9. Second stage (S- rocket).
10. Five J-2 engines.
11. First stage (S-1C rocket.
12. Five F-1 engines.
The crew compartment is small: it is a cone with a diameter at the base of 3.9 m and a height of 3.2 m. The lower, widest part of the cone is filled with supplies and equipment, in the upper there are seats for three crew members, at the top of the cone there is a hatch for access to the lunar cabin . There are no gateways.
Nevertheless, 2 hours after launch from the cosmodrome, when Apollo with the third stage of Saturn was still supposed to be in Earth orbit, one of Armstrong’s crew decided to urgently take a walk in space: he opened the hatch and went outside. There were enough television cameras inside the crew compartment, but at that time they were not filming, and this is not surprising: after all, oxygen should be released from Apollo into the open hatch, and the two remaining crew members would also have to put on spacesuits. The astronaut who walked into outer space did so solely to hang in the vacuum of space and say, “Hallelujah, Houston.” Soon, Houston demanded that he return to the compartment, since in a few minutes the Apollo acceleration to the Moon began. By the way, the absence of the third stage of the Saturn was clearly visible.
The mission control center (MCC) looms annoyingly in the film. Since there is nothing to show in it - the consoles and the people behind them, the poor director did his best to diversify the picture: he showed how they worry in the control center, and how they rejoice, and how they laugh at the endless jokes of the astronauts, and how they yawn, and how they drink coffee, how they eat, how they smoke. The flight director's trousers and boots are shown three times in the film, and everyone should remember that the trousers are a little short and the boots are brightly polished. With this technique, at the very least, the director stretched the MCC footage into 9 minutes of the total film time.
Be that as it may, but in the end, with jokes, music and songs, the astronauts finally flew up to the Moon.
My tech-savvy friends argued that the Americans could not land on the Moon due to the fact that they had no experience in docking spacecraft. Really. According to legend, on the way to the Moon, astronauts were required to undock the Apollo main block from the third stage of Saturn, turn it 180 degrees and dock again to the lunar cabin so that the upper hatch of the main block aligned with the upper hatch of the lunar cabin, otherwise Armstrong and it was impossible for Aldrin to cross into it.
So, not a word is said about this most complex operation in the film! There are no shots of the astronaut remaining in the main block saying goodbye to those moving into the lunar cabin, there are no shots of their return. But this is not a scene of the astronauts discharging minor and major needs, or a scene of them shaving, these should have been shots of the most powerful drama. But they are not available for any lunar expedition! Moreover, after approaching the Moon, the crew compartment cameras were no longer turned on, and there is not a single frame of its interior. The main unit was always shown outside. If I’m right and the Americans dropped lunar cabins onto the Moon without astronauts, then so it should be, because all three astronauts were in the crew compartment and it was impossible to show it, just as it was impossible at that time to film scenes of farewells and meetings that did not take place without real weightlessness .
On the moon
Anyway. And so they finally sit down. A television camera located somewhere outside (neither it nor the windows on the lunar cabin were found in its drawings) films the landing on the Moon. About a few meters from the surface, as can be seen from the shadow on the surface of the Moon, what appears to be jets of gas from an engine flashes in front of the lens and then the camera shudders with the shock of landing. Not a pebble, not a sand, not a speck of dust flew out from under the engine of the lunar platform with a thrust in airless space of 4530 kG. But when at the end of the film the launch of the lunar cabin of some next Apollo is shown from the Moon, starting from its metal platform, then from the jet of the engine with a thrust of 1590 kgf stones flew upward with enormous speed, to the eye no less than 20-50 kg. Nothing to say - cinema! Hollywood. By the last episode, they realized that the engine jet must somehow act on the ground.
A few words about the fact that people who are confident that the Americans were on the Moon consider the lighting spotlights from the filming pavilion that appeared in numerous photographs to be lens flares. The spotlights were also included in the frames of this film and they are clearly distinguishable from glare. (When you turn the camera, the highlights change shape and follow the camera, but the spotlights remain stationary).
The Americans were the first to install corner reflectors of a laser signal on the lunar surface. Since then, the photon signal reflected from them has been repeatedly recorded in lunar laser ranging sessions at observatories in different countries, including the USSR. This is considered reliable evidence of Americans being on the Moon. True, opponents immediately admit that “similar instruments were later delivered to the Moon in Soviet experiments with Lunokhods and are used for the same purposes along with American ones,” i.e. To install them, it is not necessary for a person to land; this can also be done by an automatic station. The USSR also delivered a corner reflector to the Moon and took soil samples, but does not boast that its cosmonauts were on the Moon. So this is absolutely circumstantial evidence. And direct evidence of the presence of American astronauts on the Moon is genuine film and photography. You can’t make them just anywhere.
The most touching, of course, are the shots of the installation of the American flag. “On the Moon” one astronaut drove a peg into the ground, another planted a flagpole on it. According to legend, the flag was made of rigid fabric on a wire frame, i.e. the flagpole looked like the letter "G". So the flag had only one free corner, and this corner showed that it was indeed free. It fluttered so merrily in the wind of the “airless” space of the “Moon” that the astronaut was forced to pull it down. The corner is sagging. But as soon as the astronaut walked away, the flag fluttered cheerfully again. (Probably, some damn Negro opened all the time and closed the gate in the filming pavilion, creating a draft).
Since the obvious absurdity of these shots began to immediately catch the eye of any more or less intelligent person, fans of America tried to get out of the situation by offering some explanations for this fact. It is worth dwelling on them in more detail. At the moment, all pro-American scientists adhere to one of two mutually exclusive hypotheses. The first claims that “these are just natural vibrations of the elastic flagpole-flag system.” But you need to not only know these clever words, but also figuratively imagine what they are. Take something elastic, for example, a ruler, pinch one end, pull it back and release the free one. These are elastic vibrations in their purest form. Their peculiarity, like any oscillations, is that the oscillating part of the system constantly deviates from the zero position - the one in which the oscillations die down.
So, in the film there is no hint of these very “elastic vibrations”. The flag is blown away by the wind in one direction from the zero position, and the ribbon trailing behind the astronaut “going into space” is also blown away in one direction. She always covers him on one side only and flutters in the draft. Those. and “going into space” is also a Hollywood fake. By the way, with this “exit” cumulus clouds are visible as close as they are visible from an airplane, and not from a space station. (By the way, American journalists themselves caught NASA giving the press photographs of the “spacewalk” that were obviously falsified). By giving this fake, the Americans are showing that they are sorely lacking material for a film about a flight to the Moon. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that in the scene of the spacewalk there are a number of frames of clearly cosmic origin: in particular, the switching on of the main engine in Earth orbit - the jet from the engine is exactly what it should be when expiring into a vacuum (severely underexpanded), visible its structure in the form of shock waves. So they still flew into space. And installation is a matter of technique.
The second hypothesis is the assumption that the flag had a motor, which created vibrations. But, in addition to the fact that this is quite difficult to imagine, it should also be noted that the oscillations created by the motor must, firstly, be strictly periodic, and secondly, have a wave profile that is constant over time. We don't see anything like this in the photographs. Of course, enthusiasts can assume that there, inside the flag, there was also a Pentium II or even III (and why not? Next to the motor!), which pulls the flag at random intervals in a random direction with random force, but still We do not consider the area of science fiction.
In addition, a significant caveat should be made: Truth is always concrete, and therefore it is impossible to implement both mutually exclusive hypotheses. If the issue is free oscillations, then why involve the hypothesis with a motor? After all, this is simply stupid! If there was a motor, then who do you need to be to believe in the hypothesis of free oscillations? Whatever you want, even if one of these hypotheses were true, it means that the supporters of the other are simply extremely stupid. Sometimes there are individuals who try to combine these two hypotheses and talk about free oscillations with a motor, but this stems from a basic ignorance of physics, and, apart from advice to read school textbooks, such people simply have nothing to say.
Another psychologically very interesting episode. The astronauts, like O. Bender, showed the world proof that they were really in the airless space of the Moon. One astronaut took a hammer in one hand and a bird feather (!) in the other, raised them to shoulder height and released them at the same time. The hammer and the feather fell to the ground at the same time. But, firstly, what is important to us is not this cheap trick, but the fact that the American children of Lieutenant Schmidt planned this on Earth in order to prove their stay on the Moon, for which the astronauts carried a “feather” with them. If they really were on the moon, then why is this necessary? Secondly, Hollywood was not smart enough to understand that they conducted a physical experiment by which one can calculate the acceleration of free fall, and by its value understand whether this is happening on the Moon or not. I think that if they understood this, they would stick a feather in the ass of whoever came up with this trick. But more on that below.
All the “lunar” shots are frankly playful: the astronauts play out their stay on the Moon, and this catches your eye. For example, an episode: between a television camera and two astronauts there is approximately 20 m of sandy surface. About 2 meters from the camera, a stone 10 centimeters in diameter and 20 centimeters in height sticks out vertically. There are no other more or less large stones anywhere else. In theory, the astronauts themselves were supposed to install the television camera and, moving away from it, were obliged to trip over this stone. The episode has begun. The astronaut from afar moves back to the camera and joyfully exclaims: “Look, what a stone!” And in the center of the frame it begins to rise. Those. This is the “lunar” version of the joke about the piano in the bushes.
There is not a single documentary, natural episode in this filming “on the Moon”. Here is an astronaut demonstrating useful activity - driving a small pin into the ground. There are no wires coming from the pin, there are no devices - a bare metal pin. He hammered, put the hammer in his pocket, turned and ran, singing some song. Why did he take him to the moon and why did he kill him?
The lunar scenes with the astronauts are clearly played in slow motion in order to create the appearance of the astronauts moving “like on the Moon.” When running and jumping, astronauts slowly lift off the surface and slowly descend. For several minutes in the film they deliberately fall to show that the fall is slow. If we consider the risk of a real and very careful stay on the Moon, then the behavior of the astronauts with their self-indulgence and falls clearly indicates that if they and the Mission Control Center are not completely kamikazes, then this is not the Moon.
Let's get back to running. If you ignore the slow motion, you can see that the astronauts in their spacesuits are having a very hard time. But they are on the Moon, where the weight is six times less than on earth, despite the fact that the muscle strength remains the same. Let's say, astronaut Aldrin in a spacesuit (about 11 kG) and with a life support pack (45 kG) weighs 161 kG on Earth, and 27 kG on the Moon. Let's remember school and do a little math.
Running on the Moon
When walking and running, the leg lifts us off the ground and throws us up to a certain height h. The energy of this throw is equal to our weight multiplied by this height. On the Moon, our weight will be 6 times less, therefore, with the same usual muscular effort, the leg will throw us to a height h 6 times higher than on Earth.
From high h we are returned to earth by the force of its gravity over time t, calculated by the formula
(It seems doubtful to me that such a decrease in speed would be noticeable by eye; I’m afraid that I won’t be able to tell by eye whether a person is walking at a speed of 5 km/h or 4.1 km/h, whether a car is driving at a speed of 10 km/h or 8 km/h).
Let's assume that on Earth Aldrin, wearing only his shorts, makes it above the surface in the 0.14 seconds we have calculated. a step 0.9 m long. On the Moon in a spacesuit, his speed will decrease by 1.22 times, but the time before descending to the surface will increase by 0.71/0.14 = 5.1 times, therefore, Aldrin’s step width will increase by 5 ,1/1.22 = 4.2 times, or up to 0.9 x 4.2 = 3.8 m. The spacesuit makes movement difficult and, let’s say, for this reason its step will decrease by 0.5 m on Earth. On the Moon it will also decrease by this distance and amount to 3.8 - 0.5 = 3.3 m.
Therefore, on the Moon in a spacesuit, the astronauts' step speed above the surface should be slightly slower than on Earth, but the height of the rise with each step should be 4 times higher than on Earth, and the width of the step should be 4 times wider.
In the film, the astronauts run and jump, but the height of their jumps and the width of their steps are much smaller than on Earth. This is not surprising, because when they were filmed in Hollywood, they still had at least an imitation of a spacesuit and a life support pack, they were pretty loaded and it was hard for them. And replaying the filming in slow motion cannot hide this heaviness. Astronauts tread very heavily with their feet when running, kilograms of sand fly out from under their feet, they can barely lift their legs, and their toes are constantly paddling along the surface. But slowly...
Such an episode. Aldrin, with jokes and jokes, jumps from the last step of the lunar module to the “Moon”. The height is about 0.8 m, he holds onto the ladder with his hands. Since his weight in the spacesuit is 27 kg, i.e. is four times lighter than wearing only shorts on Earth, then for his trained muscles this jump is equivalent to jumping on Earth from a height of 0.2 m, i.e. from one step. Let each of you jump from such a height, without even holding on to anything with your hands, and look at your condition. Aldrin, when jumping from the step, slowly sank to the surface, then his knees began to bend and he bent at the waist, i.e. he hit the moon so hard that his trained muscles could not hold his body upright in the spacesuit.
Ground pressure
A little preface to the next calculation. My opponent brought me a thick book “Lunar soil from the Sea of Abundance” Nauka, M., 1974 so that I could read it myself and make sure that the lunar soil delivered by the Soviet automatic station “Luna-16” corresponded to the soil taken by the astronauts . Yes, that's what the book says. But how is this established? Our scientists reported to the Americans the results of studies of lunar soil, and the Americans informed us that they had the same thing. Of the 400 kg of American “lunar soil”, not a single gram was sent to the USSR for research, and, it seems to me, that is still the case. Yes, some amount of lunar soil can be obtained using automatic stations. But since these samples were taken in the absence of people - thoughtlessly, in the same way as they were taken by Soviet automatic stations - then the scientific result from the study of these samples should not have differed much from zero.
The American Lunar and Planetary Institute holds 2 conferences a year dedicated to the Moon, and a lot of lectures are given there. And yet, we know little about the composition of the Moon. Where does this knowledge come from? Two or three point samples from the most uninteresting and uninformative points of the Moon - from flat areas? These samples can be analyzed for at least a hundred years using any new methods of analysis, but still these analyzes will not say anything about the Moon, since on the surface of the Moon, as on the Earth, there may be God knows what, not related either to the crust or to the structure of the planet . But there is not the slightest hint that the Americans made even the slightest attempt at geological exploration on the Moon! The USSR, with the help of then imperfect automatic stations, could not conduct any geological exploration, but they - with people and cars - why didn’t they try to do it? Why weren’t soil samples, bedrock and ore deposits meaningfully sampled?
The fact is that, with the help of their lunar soil, the Americans were ahead of the USSR in only one issue - in proving the existence of paranormal phenomena.
A specialist in this matter, A. Kartashkin, in the book “Poltergeist” (M., “Santax-Press”, 1997) reports this:
“Alexander Kuzovkin wrote an article “Some aspects of the manifestation of the UFO and poltergeist phenomenon.”
It tells (with reference to the newspaper "Moskovskaya Pravda" dated October 6, 1979) about an absolutely incredible incident. Let us remember that by that time American astronauts had already visited the Moon and brought back samples of lunar soil to Earth. Of course, this soil was immediately placed in a special, sophisticatedly encrypted storage facility. Suffice it to say that this storage facility cost $2.2 million to design and build. Of course, the room with lunar soil was guarded with particular partiality. It is even more amazing that a significant number of lunar soil samples soon... disappeared without a trace" . (Emphasis added - original article)
And Americans lament that we know very little about the Moon. How can you find out more if Barabashka stole the most valuable samples from the unfortunate Americans? How do you like this American Drum? No patriotism!
Regarding the traces of the soles of astronauts “on the Moon,” the following data from the above-mentioned book on lunar soil is interesting. The researchers write (p. 38) that the lunar soil is “easily shaped and crushed into separate loose lumps. Traces of external influences—the touch of a tool—are clearly imprinted on its surface. The soil easily holds a vertical wall...” It formally follows from this that shoe protectors astronauts, squeezing the soil from above and from the sides, could leave a clear mark. (Although I find it difficult to understand how the researchers could estimate the moldability of the soil with a sample less than a stack in size.) But the researchers write that the soil “...when poured freely, has an angle of repose of 45 degrees (and gives a photo). That is, the soil without pressing does not “hold the wall.” If we pour wet sand into a glass on the beach, and then we turn the glass over and remove it, then the sand will retain the internal shape of the glass, it will hold the wall even without pressing, with free pouring in. And if we pour dry sand into the glass and turn it over, the sand will spread, forming a cone with an angle of repose, i.e. it does not hold the wall.
It follows that the tread mark of the soles of American astronauts should be clear only in the center, and along the edges of the shoes, where the soil is not pressed, it should crumble at an angle of 45 degrees. This is the kind of trace - with crumbling edges - that our Lunokhod left on the Moon. In American photos, the soil holds a wall on the footprints both in the center and at the edges. Those. This is not lunar soil, this is wet sand.
Further from this book you can find out the compressibility of lunar soil. But first, let's do the math. There is a famous full-length shot of Aldrin in profile. It is unlikely that he is less than 190 cm tall, taking into account the soles and his helmet. In relation to his height, the length of his shoes is approximately 40 cm. From the photos of individual astronaut footprints it is clear that the width of the footprint is almost equal to half its length, i.e. the area of the sole is about 800 sq. cm; to take into account the rounding of the sole, we will reduce this value by a quarter - to 600 sq. cm. The trail has 10 transverse treads, and taking into account the approximately equal sized depressions, these treads are 2 cm wide and high. Let us estimate the surface area of the treads to be half the total area of the sole, i.e. in 300 sq.cm. Aldrin's weight on the Moon is well known - 27 kg. Hence, the pressure on the ground using only protectors is less than 0.1 kgf/sq.cm.
From diagram 7 on page 579 in the mentioned book it follows that at such pressure the lunar soil will compress (settle) by less than 5 mm. Those. Even the treads of an astronaut’s soles could not be completely immersed in real lunar soil on the Moon. But in all the photos, the prints of the soles are imprinted so that the side surfaces of the shoes form vertical walls even above the sole! If these footprints really were on the Moon, then we would not see the complete footprints of the astronauts’ shoes, but only shallow strips of tread. No, it’s not the Moon, it’s all 161 kg of Aldrin’s earthly weight pressing on the wet sand!
Acceleration of gravity
Now let's return to the experiment with the falling of the hammer and the "feather". In this trick, it was important for the Americans that the hammer and the “feather” fall at the same time, but they did not realize that the time during which they fall is also important. The astronaut dropped them from a height of no less than 1.4 m. The average fall time based on several measurements gave the result of 0.83 seconds. From here, using the formula a = 2h/t squared, the acceleration of gravity is easily calculated. It amounted to 2 x 1.4 / 0.832 = 4.1 m/sec. squared. And on the Moon this value should be 1.6 m/sec. squared, that means it’s not the Moon! Have you experimented yet, smart guys?!
There is another episode in the film. An astronaut is running with a bag full of samples on his shoulder. One stone falls down while running and falls to the ground in 0.63 seconds. Even if the astronaut bent his knees very strongly while running, the height from which the stone fell could not be less than 1.3 m. According to the above formula, this gives the value of the acceleration of gravity of 6.6 m/sec. squared. The result is even worse!
I was faced with a question: is this difference not my error in measuring time? I took seven measurements of the time the stone fell and got (sec.): 0.65; 0.62; 0.61; 0.65; 0.71; 0.55; 0.61. On average - 0.63, we will not count the standard deviation, since even the maximum error in both directions turned out to be 0.08 seconds. If this were on the Moon, the time it would take for the stone to fall would be
The difference between 1.27 and 0.63 is much greater than the 0.08 second error I allowed. This means that this is not a mistake, and therefore not the Moon!
The launch of the lunar cabin from its platform from the Moon was also shown. Firstly, the flame of a running engine was not visible near the starting cabin. Nevertheless, several dozen stones very quickly flew out from under the platform. One stone had an upper zero point, after which it began to decline until it went off the screen. Based on the size of the cabin, I roughly estimated that while the stone was visible, it fell by 10 meters. But the time of fall could not be determined. I was unable to press the button on the stopwatch at the required speed: the minimum that I could squeeze out of the stopwatch and myself was 0.25 seconds. But the speed of the stone’s fall was even greater; it disappeared before the stopwatch could squeak under my finger. Therefore, let’s assume that the stone fell 10 m in exactly these 0.25 seconds. Then the acceleration of gravity is 2 x 10 / 0.252 = 320 m/sec2. This, you see, is somewhat more than 1.6 m/sec squared on the Moon and 9.8 m/sec. squared on Earth. Wasn't it the Sun?
I think that's what's going on here. The lunar cabin “at launch” was lifted up with a winch, and the winch cable cannot be secured so that it passes exactly through the center of gravity, and it is difficult to align the winch itself strictly at the center of gravity, and if you lift the cabin quickly and pull it, it will begin to swing ( hang out). I had to pull it slowly and then scroll the film very quickly. As a result, the stones, which simultaneously rose upward with an expelling charge, acquired incredible speed.
Battle for the Moon
But why did the Americans need it - to take a huge risk in order to deceive the entire population of the Earth? Why risk your career like that? Because, having lost to the Soviet Union in the lunar race, they lost everything - 30 billion from the federal budget, prestige, self-esteem, careers, jobs. No one in America would need this Moon for nothing, and no one could convince the American taxpayer to allocate money to an organization that is unable to defend the prestige of America. So there is a motive. NASA knew how to send three people to the Moon and FLY AROUND the Moon, but had no technical experience when it came to landing on the Moon. How to undock from the "mother" ship (flying in lunar orbit) and lower it into a smaller, self-contained "shuttle" (lunar module), launch a lunar landing rocket pushing the module with a force of 10,000 pounds, fly the module to the planned landing site, land, put on spacesuits, go to the surface, tinker, act out a scene on the surface, ride on the Moon, return to the module, take off, rendezvous and dock with the mother ship, and finally return to Earth.
That's why they faked everything. Considering that Stanley Kubrick's blockbuster 2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed at the same time, the technology for the necessary special effects already existed. And for the tidy sum of 20 billion dollars you can make a very long movie.
In a video released on VHS cassette called "It's just a paper moon", American investigative journalist Jim Collier points out several minor inconsistencies, listed below:
1. Two Apollo astronauts, fully dressed in spacesuits, simply physically could not fit into the module and, in addition, open the door, because the door opened INWARDS, not outwards. They would not have been able to exit the module while wearing their spacesuits. He (D.K.) measured distances using film.
2. The Apollo astronaut was physically unable to squeeze through the tunnel connecting the mothership and the module. It's too narrow. Collier went to the NASA museum and measured it. The ends of the tunnel contained a ring of docking devices. The NASA "in-flight" footage we were talking about was supposedly taken during the flight to the Moon and shows the astronauts freely flying through the tunnel, which in itself says a lot, apart from the fact that there were no visible images on film. docking devices. Plus, to all this, the tunnel hatch opened in the wrong direction. So this filming was done ON EARTH.
3. Footage taken during the flight to the Moon shows BLUE light pouring through the windows of the spacecraft. But since in outer space there is no atmosphere capable of decomposing light into a spectrum, space is BLACK. These shots were taken ON GROUND, most likely in the cargo hold of a supersonic plane going into a deep dive to create the effect of weightlessness.
4. Photos taken by the astronauts who landed on the moon show the module standing on a flat, smooth, undisturbed surface. This could not have happened if they had actually landed on the moon using jet engines that were pressurized at 10,000 psi. The entire surface of the lunar landing site would have been seriously damaged. These pictures were taken ON GROUND.
5. There are no stars in any of the photographs of the Apollo astronauts. Not one. This can't be true. Astronauts, if they were on the Moon, would be surrounded by stars shining with white light, the presence of an atmosphere would not prevent them from sparkling to their fullest. These pictures were taken here ON EARTH. (The usual objection to this is that, due to different brightnesses, it is impossible to capture the surface of the Moon and the starry sky at the same time and in high quality. Opponents probably don’t know that the Moon is a very dark object, its albedo is only about 10%. Right now I’m holding in my hands the book “Course in General Astronomy” by Bakulin, Kononovich and Moroz, where on page 322 there is a photograph of the lunar landscape transmitted by the Luna 9 station. It shows a piece of the sky - and there are stars on it!)
6. Each astronaut and objects standing on the lunar surface cast many shadows, and shadows of varying lengths. This can't be true. There is no other source of light on the Moon other than the SUN, and, quite obviously, the light must fall in one direction. So these pictures were taken ON EARTH.
7. Considering that lunar gravity is 1/6 of Earth's gravity, the "rooster's tail" of dust raised by the wheels of the "dune stroller" (lunar rover) would have to rise SIX TIMES higher than it would be on Earth when driving with the same speed. But this is not the case. In addition, the dust falls in layers - LAYERS! Which is impossible where there is no atmosphere. The dust should have fallen in the same smooth arch as it had risen.
8. Even when disassembled, the lunar rover could not physically fit on the lunar module. Collier went and measured everything. A few feet are missing. Pictures taken “on the Moon” show astronauts HEADING to the module to remove the rover. After which the shooting ends. When the lunar panorama reappears, the rover has already been disassembled. How awesome!
9. The Lunar Module crashed - CRASHED - during its only test on Earth. So why was his next challenge trying to land on the MOON? If you were the wife of an astronaut, would you allow him to participate in such a suicide attempt?
10. None of the Apollo astronauts ever wrote a book on the topic “How I Went to the Moon” or any other memoirs on the same topic.
11. But that’s not all - far, far, far from all. We can also talk about the placement of engine guides, smoke from burning rocket fuel, and so on and so forth...
Two great discoveries
In 1982, 10 years after the full end of the lunar program, a beautifully illustrated book “Space Technology” was published by a team of American, Soviet and other authors. The chapter "Man on the Moon" was written by the American R. Lewis.
I will give the "Some Summary" section of this chapter in full, so that no one will think that I have hidden any of the outstanding American achievements. But I draw your attention to the fact that this chapter should contain only that knowledge about the Moon that was obtained thanks to man’s presence on this satellite of the Earth, and not general blah-blah. So consider what exactly R. Lewis wrote into this section to make it longer than three lines.
So: “The Apollo 17 expedition was the last expedition to the Moon. During six visits to the Moon, 384.2 kg of rock and soil samples were collected. During the implementation of the research program, a number of discoveries were made, but the most important are the following two. "First, it was established that the Moon is sterile, no life forms were found on it. After the flight of the Apollo 14 spacecraft, the previously introduced three-week quarantine for the crew was canceled."
Amazing discovery! The “Small Soviet Encyclopedia” for 1931 (I couldn’t find anything earlier) states: "The moon is devoid of atmosphere and water, and therefore life" . For this “important” discovery it was necessary to send people to the Moon?! And most importantly, what exactly did the astronauts do to make this discovery? Have you passed the quarantine, have you worked as experimental mice?
“Secondly, it was found that the Moon, like the Earth, went through a series of periods of internal heating. It has a surface layer - a crust that is quite thick compared to the radius of the Moon, a mantle and a core, consisting, according to some researchers, of iron sulfide ".
What exactly did the astronauts do to reach this conclusion? Indeed, in their soil samples (as in Soviet ones) sulfur is completely absent! How did the Americans determine that the core consists of iron sulfide?
“Although the chemistry of the Moon and Earth are quite similar, they differ significantly in other respects, which confirms the point of view of scientists who reject the idea that the Moon separated from the Earth during the formation of planets.
The conclusion that no forms of life have ever existed on the Moon is confirmed by the complete absence of water here, at least on or near the lunar surface."
According to limited seismic data, the crust of the part of the Moon closest to us is 60-65 km thick. On the part of the Moon distant from us, the crust may be somewhat thicker - about 150 km. The mantle is located under the crust to a depth of about 1000 km, and the core is even deeper.
30 years later, the Americans began sending automatic stations to the Moon in order to still find out what their astronauts had supposedly already “discovered”.
The results are reported, for example, in the article (Feldman W., Maurice S., Binder B., Barraclough B., Elphic R., Lawrence D. Fluxes of fast and epithermal neutrons from Lunar Prospector: evidence for water ice at the lunar poles // Science. 1998. V. 281. P. 1496 – 1500.) Read.
The American spacecraft Lunar Prospector operated in lunar orbit for eighteen months.
Throughout its mission, this device, weighing 295 kg and slightly larger than a home washing machine, continually puzzled scientists with amazing discoveries. For the first time in early 1998, the Lunar Prospector stunned the scientific community with the discovery of huge amounts of ice in the shadowed areas near the lunar poles!
When rotating around our natural satellite, the device experienced minor changes in its speed. Calculations based on these indicators revealed the presence of a core on the Moon. Assuming that, like on Earth, it consists mainly of iron, experts calculated its dimensions. In their opinion, the radius of the lunar core should be from 220 to 450 km (the radius of the Moon is 1738 km).
Lunar Prospector's magnetometers detected a weak magnetic field near our natural satellite. Based on this field, the dimensions of the nucleus were clarified. Its radius turned out to be 300-425 km. With such dimensions, the mass of the core should be about 2% of the mass of the Moon. Let us emphasize that the Earth’s core, with a radius of about 3400 km, accounts for a full third of the planet’s mass.
So . Valiant American astronauts “found out” that the core of the Moon has a radius of 1738-1000 = 738 km. And the automatic station found out that it is equal to 300-425 km, half as much! Valiant astronauts “found out” that the core of the Moon consists of iron sulfide. And the Lunar Prospector found out that there is little iron in the core. The valiant astronauts “found out” that there is no ice on the Moon. And Lunar Prospector found out that there are many!
So how do the results of the American moon landing differ from idle chatter?
I think I have already answered the question raised at the beginning of the article - why the Americans do not demand that Russian TV show these films about their “most outstanding victory in the 20th century.” We, the generation that received a normal education, have not yet died out, we have not yet been completely replaced by those who chose Pepsi and safe sex. Well, how can we show such nonsense? And, looking at this American propaganda fake about the moon landing, we have to admit: no, guys, you weren't standing there!
The so-called “American landing on the moon in 1969” was a huge fake! Or, in Russian, a grandiose deception! Western politicians have this rule: “If you cannot win in fair competition, achieve victory by deception or meanness!”
Surprisingly, not only American astronauts, but also Soviet astronauts, who stated that “Only absolutely ignorant people can seriously believe that the Americans have not been to the Moon!”. This, in particular, was the opinion of Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, when many citizens of the USSR, who carefully studied all the materials on the “American lunar epic,” discovered obvious mistakes and inconsistencies in it.
And only now, after almost half a century, it becomes clear that all this information entered by historians into various encyclopedias is actually misinformation!
"Apollo 11" is a manned spacecraft of the Apollo series, during the flight of which on July 16-24, 1969, the inhabitants of the Earth for the first time in history landed on the surface of another celestial body - the Moon.
On July 20, 1969, at 20:17:39 UTC, crew commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Edwin Aldrin landed the spacecraft's lunar module in the southwestern region of the Sea of Tranquility. They remained on the lunar surface for 21 hours, 36 minutes and 21 seconds. All this time, command module pilot Michael Collins was waiting for them in lunar orbit. The astronauts made one exit to the lunar surface, which lasted 2 hours 31 minutes 40 seconds. The first man to set foot on the moon was Neil Armstrong. This happened on July 21, at 02:56:15 UTC. Aldrin joined him 15 minutes later.
The astronauts planted a US flag at the landing site, placed a set of scientific instruments and collected 21.55 kg of lunar soil samples, which were delivered to Earth. After the flight, crew members and lunar rock samples underwent strict quarantine, which did not reveal any lunar microorganisms.
The successful completion of the Apollo 11 flight program meant achieving the national goal set by the President of the United States John Kennedy in May 1961 - to land on the moon before the end of the decade, and marked the victory of the United States in the lunar race with the USSR.".
Surprisingly, John Kennedy, the US President who approved the program of “landing a man on the moon before 1970,” was publicly shot in front of a crowd of millions of Americans back in 1963. And what’s even more surprising is that the entire archive of film on which the landing of American astronauts on the Moon was faked in July 1969 subsequently disappeared from NASA storage! It was allegedly stolen!
The Russians have a very good proverb about this: "do not count your chickens before they are hatched!" Its literal meaning is this: on peasant farms, not all chickens born in the summer survive until the fall. Some will be carried away by birds of prey, but the weak will simply not survive. That’s why they say that you need to count chickens in the fall, when it is clear how many of them have survived. The allegorical meaning of this proverb is this: one must judge something by the final results. Premature joy from the first result, especially if it was obtained dishonestly, may later give way to bitter disappointment!
Absolutely in the context of this Russian proverb, today it turns out that the Americans still do not have a reliable and powerful rocket engine that could propel their American spacecraft to the Moon and return it back to Earth.
Below is a story by a Soviet and Russian scientist about the leadership of Russian science and space industry in the field of creating rocket engines.
The creator of the world's best liquid-propellant rocket engines, Academician Boris Katorgin, explains why the Americans still cannot repeat our achievements in this area, and how to maintain the Soviet head start in the future.
On June 21, 2012, the winners of the Global Energy Prize were awarded at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. An authoritative commission of industry experts from different countries selected three applications from the 639 submitted and named the laureates of the year’s prize, which is already commonly called the “Nobel Prize for energy workers.” As a result, 33 million bonus rubles this year were shared by the famous inventor from Great Britain, Professor Rodney John Allam, and two of our outstanding scientists - academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Katorgin and Valery Kostyuk.
All three are related to the creation of cryogenic technology, the study of the properties of cryogenic products and their use in various power plants. Academician Boris Katorgin was awarded “for the development of highly efficient liquid rocket engines using cryogenic fuels, which ensure reliable operation of space systems at high energy parameters for the peaceful use of space.” With the direct participation of Katorgin, who devoted more than fifty years to the OKB-456 enterprise, now known as NPO Energomash, liquid rocket engines (LPRE) were created, the performance characteristics of which are now considered the best in the world. Katorgin himself was involved in the development of schemes for organizing the working process in engines, the mixture formation of fuel components and the elimination of pulsation in the combustion chamber. His fundamental work on nuclear rocket engines (NRE) with high specific impulse and developments in the field of creating high-power continuous chemical lasers are also known.
During the most difficult times for Russian science-intensive organizations, from 1991 to 2009, Boris Katorgin headed NPO Energomash, combining the positions of general director and general designer, and managed not only to save the company, but also to create a number of new engines. The lack of an internal order for engines forced Katorgin to look for a customer on the foreign market. One of the new engines was the RD-180, developed in 1995 specifically to participate in a tender organized by the American corporation Lockheed Martin, which was choosing a liquid-propellant rocket engine for the Atlas launch vehicle, which was then being modernized. As a result, NPO Energomash signed an agreement for the supply of 101 engines and by the beginning of 2012 had already supplied more than 60 liquid propellant engines to the United States, 35 of which were successfully operated on Atlases when launching satellites for various purposes.
Before presenting the award, “Expert” talked with academician Boris Katorgin about the state and prospects for the development of liquid rocket engines and found out why engines based on developments forty years ago are still considered innovative, and the RD-180 could not be recreated at American factories.
Boris Ivanovich, what exactly is your contribution to the creation of domestic liquid jet engines, which are now considered the best in the world?
To explain this to a non-specialist probably requires a special skill. For liquid rocket engines, I developed combustion chambers and gas generators; in general, he supervised the creation of the engines themselves for the peaceful exploration of outer space. (In the combustion chambers, mixing and burning of fuel and oxidizer occurs and a volume of hot gases is formed, which, then ejected through the nozzles, create the jet thrust itself; in gas generators the fuel mixture is also burned, but for the operation of turbopumps, which pump fuel and oxidizer under enormous pressure into the same combustion chamber. - “Expert.”)
You are talking about peaceful space exploration, although it is obvious that all engines with a thrust from several tens to 800 tons, which were created at NPO Energomash, were intended primarily for military needs.
We did not have to drop a single atomic bomb, we did not deliver a single nuclear warhead on our missiles to the target, and thank God. All military developments went into peaceful space. We can be proud of the enormous contribution of our rocket and space technology to the development of human civilization. Thanks to astronautics, entire technological clusters were born: space navigation, telecommunications, satellite television, sensing systems.
The engine for the R-9 intercontinental ballistic missile that you worked on later formed the basis for almost our entire manned program.
Back in the late 1950s, I carried out computational and experimental work to improve mixture formation in the combustion chambers of the RD-111 engine, which was intended for that same rocket. The results of the work are still used in modified RD-107 and RD-108 engines for the same Soyuz rocket; about two thousand space flights have been carried out on them, including all manned programs.
Two years ago I interviewed your colleague, Global Energy laureate Academician Alexander Leontyev. In a conversation about specialists closed to the general public, which Leontyev himself once was, he mentioned Vitaly Ievlev, who also did a lot for our space industry.
Many academicians who worked for the defense industry were kept secret - that's a fact. Now much has been declassified - this is also a fact. I know Alexander Ivanovich very well: he worked on creating calculation methods and methods for cooling the combustion chambers of various rocket engines. Solving this technological problem was not easy, especially when we began to squeeze out the maximum chemical energy of the fuel mixture to obtain maximum specific impulse, increasing, among other measures, the pressure in the combustion chambers to 250 atmospheres.
Let's take our most powerful engine - RD-170. Fuel consumption with oxidizer - kerosene with liquid oxygen passing through the engine - 2.5 tons per second. The heat flows in it reach 50 megawatts per square meter - this is enormous energy. The temperature in the combustion chamber is 3.5 thousand degrees Celsius!
It was necessary to come up with a special cooling for the combustion chamber so that it could work properly and withstand the thermal pressure. Alexander Ivanovich did just that, and, I must say, he did a great job. Vitaly Mikhailovich Ievlev - Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, who unfortunately died quite early - was a scientist of the widest profile, possessed of encyclopedic erudition. Like Leontiev, he worked a lot on methods for calculating highly stressed thermal structures. Their work overlapped in some places, was integrated in others, and as a result, an excellent technique was obtained that can be used to calculate the thermal intensity of any combustion chambers; Now, perhaps, using it, any student can do this. In addition, Vitaly Mikhailovich took an active part in the development of nuclear and plasma rocket engines. Here our interests intersected in those years when Energomash was doing the same thing.
In our conversation with Leontiev, we touched upon the topic of selling Energomashev’s RD-180 engines in the USA, and Alexander Ivanovich said that in many ways this engine is the result of developments that were made precisely during the creation of the RD-170, and in a sense, its half . Is this really the result of reverse scaling?
Any engine in a new dimension is, of course, a new device. The RD-180 with a thrust of 400 tons is really half the size of the RD-170 with a thrust of 800 tons.
The RD-191, designed for our new Angara rocket, has a thrust of 200 tons. What do these engines have in common? They all have one turbopump, but the RD-170 has four combustion chambers, the “American” RD-180 has two, and the RD-191 has one. Each engine requires its own turbopump unit - after all, if the four-chamber RD-170 consumes approximately 2.5 tons of fuel per second, for which a turbopump with a capacity of 180 thousand kilowatts was developed, more than two times greater than, for example, the power of the reactor of the nuclear icebreaker "Arktika" , then the two-chamber RD-180 is only half, 1.2 tons. I participated directly in the development of turbopumps for the RD-180 and RD-191 and at the same time supervised the creation of these engines as a whole.
The combustion chamber, then, is the same on all these engines, only their number is different?
Yes, and this is our main achievement. In one such chamber with a diameter of only 380 millimeters, a little more than 0.6 tons of fuel per second is burned. Without exaggeration, this chamber is a unique, highly heat-stressed equipment with special protection belts from powerful heat flows. Protection is carried out not only due to external cooling of the chamber walls, but also thanks to an ingenious method of “lining” a film of fuel on them, which, evaporating, cools the wall.
On the basis of this outstanding camera, which has no equal in the world, we manufacture our best engines: RD-170 and RD-171 for Energia and Zenit, RD-180 for the American Atlas and RD-191 for the new Russian rocket "Angara".
- “Angara” was supposed to replace “Proton-M” several years ago, but the creators of the rocket faced serious problems, the first flight tests were repeatedly postponed, and the project seems to continue to stall.
There really were problems. The decision has now been made to launch the rocket in 2013. The peculiarity of the Angara is that, based on its universal rocket modules, it is possible to create a whole family of launch vehicles with a payload capacity of 2.5 to 25 tons for launching cargo into low Earth orbit based on the universal oxygen-kerosene engine RD-191. Angara-1 has one engine, Angara-3 has three with a total thrust of 600 tons, Angara-5 will have 1000 tons of thrust, that is, it will be able to put more cargo into orbit than Proton. In addition, instead of the very toxic heptyl, which is burned in Proton engines, we use environmentally friendly fuel, after combustion of which only water and carbon dioxide remain.
How did it happen that the same RD-170, which was created back in the mid-1970s, still remains, in fact, an innovative product, and its technologies are used as the basis for new liquid-propellant rocket engines?
A similar story happened with the aircraft created after World War II by Vladimir Mikhailovich Myasishchev (long-range strategic bomber of the M series, developed by the Moscow OKB-23 in the 1950s - “Expert”). In many respects, the aircraft was about thirty years ahead of its time, and elements of its design were later borrowed by other aircraft manufacturers. It’s the same here: the RD-170 has a lot of new elements, materials, and design solutions. According to my estimates, they will not become obsolete for several decades. This is primarily due to the founder of NPO Energomash and its general designer Valentin Petrovich Glushko and Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vitaly Petrovich Radovsky, who headed the company after Glushko’s death. (Note that the world's best energy and operational characteristics of the RD-170 are largely ensured thanks to Katorgin's solution to the problem of suppressing high-frequency combustion instability through the development of anti-pulsation partitions in the same combustion chamber. - "Expert".) And the RD-253 engine of the first stage for Proton launch vehicle? Adopted back in 1965, it is so perfect that it has not yet been surpassed by anyone! This is exactly how Glushko taught us to design - at the limit of the possible and necessarily above the world average.
Another important thing to remember is that the country has invested in its technological future. What was it like in the Soviet Union? The Ministry of General Engineering, which was in charge, in particular, of space and rockets, spent 22 percent of its huge budget on R&D alone - in all areas, including propulsion. Today, the amount of research funding is much less, and that says a lot.
Doesn’t this mean that these liquid-propellant rocket engines achieved certain perfect qualities, and this happened half a century ago, that the rocket engine with a chemical energy source is in some sense becoming obsolete: the main discoveries have been made in new generations of liquid-propellant rocket engines, now we are talking more about the so-called supporting innovations?
Definitely not. Liquid rocket engines are in demand and will be in demand for a very long time, because no other technology is capable of more reliably and economically lifting cargo from the Earth and placing it into low-Earth orbit. They are safe from an environmental point of view, especially those that run on liquid oxygen and kerosene. But liquid rocket engines, of course, are completely unsuitable for flights to stars and other galaxies. The mass of the entire metagalaxy is 10 to 56 grams. In order to accelerate on a liquid-propellant rocket engine to at least a quarter of the speed of light, an absolutely incredible amount of fuel is required - 10 to the 3200th power of grams, so it’s stupid to even think about it. Liquid rocket engines have their own niche - propulsion engines. Using liquid engines, you can accelerate the carrier to the second escape velocity, fly to Mars, and that’s it.
Next stage - nuclear rocket engines?
Certainly. It is unknown whether we will live to reach some stages, but much was done to develop nuclear propulsion engines already in Soviet times. Now, under the leadership of the Keldysh Center, headed by Academician Anatoly Sazonovich Koroteev, a so-called transport and energy module is being developed. The designers came to the conclusion that it was possible to create a gas-cooled nuclear reactor that was less stressful than in the USSR, which would work both as a power plant and as an energy source for plasma engines when traveling in space. Such a reactor is currently being designed at NIKIET named after N. A. Dollezhal under the leadership of Corresponding Member of the RAS Yuri Grigorievich Dragunov. The Kaliningrad design bureau “Fakel” also participates in the project, where electric jet engines are being created. As in Soviet times, it will not be possible without the Voronezh Chemical Automation Design Bureau, where gas turbines and compressors will be manufactured to circulate the coolant - the gas mixture - in a closed circuit.
In the meantime, let's fly on a rocket engine?
Of course, we clearly see prospects for the further development of these engines. There are tactical, long-term tasks, there are no limits: the introduction of new, more heat-resistant coatings, new composite materials, reducing the weight of engines, increasing their reliability, simplifying the control circuit. A number of elements can be introduced to more closely monitor the wear of parts and other processes occurring in the engine. There are strategic tasks: for example, the development of liquefied methane and acetylene together with ammonia or ternary fuel as combustible fuel. NPO Energomash is developing a three-component engine. Such a liquid-propellant rocket engine could be used as an engine for both the first and second stages. At the first stage, it uses well-developed components: oxygen, liquid kerosene, and if you add about five percent more hydrogen, the specific impulse - one of the main energy characteristics of the engine - will increase significantly, which means that more payload can be sent into space. At the first stage, all kerosene with the addition of hydrogen is produced, and at the second, the same engine switches from running on three-component fuel to two-component fuel - hydrogen and oxygen.
We have already created an experimental engine, albeit of small size and a thrust of only about 7 tons, carried out 44 tests, made full-scale mixing elements in the nozzles, in the gas generator, in the combustion chamber, and found out that it is possible to first work on three components, and then smoothly switch to two. Everything works out, high combustion efficiency is achieved, but to go further, we need a larger sample, we need to modify the stands in order to launch into the combustion chamber the components that we are going to use in a real engine: liquid hydrogen and oxygen, as well as kerosene. I think this is a very promising direction and a big step forward. And I hope to have time to do something during my lifetime.
- Why have the Americans, having received the right to reproduce the RD-180, not been able to make it for many years?
Americans are very pragmatic. In the 1990s, at the very beginning of working with us, they realized that in the energy field we were much ahead of them and we needed to adopt these technologies from us. For example, our RD-170 engine in one launch, due to its greater specific impulse, could carry two tons more payload than their most powerful F-1, which meant a gain of 20 million dollars at that time. They announced a competition for an engine with a thrust of 400 tons for their Atlases, which was won by our RD-180. Then the Americans thought that they would start working with us, and in four years they would take our technologies and reproduce them themselves. I immediately told them: you will spend more than a billion dollars and ten years. Four years have passed, and they say: yes, we need six years. More years passed, they said: no, we need another eight years. Seventeen years have passed and they have not reproduced a single engine!
They now need billions of dollars just for bench equipment. At Energomash we have stands where the same RD-170 engine, whose jet power reaches 27 million kilowatts, can be tested in a pressure chamber.
Did I hear right - 27 gigawatts? This is more than the installed capacity of all Rosatom nuclear power plants.
Twenty-seven gigawatts is the power of the jet, which develops in a relatively short time. When tested on a bench, the energy of the jet is first extinguished in a special pool, then in a dissipation pipe with a diameter of 16 meters and a height of 100 meters. To build such a stand, which houses an engine that creates such power, you need to invest a lot of money. The Americans have now abandoned this and are taking the finished product. As a result, we do not sell raw materials, but a product with enormous added value, into which highly intellectual work has been invested. Unfortunately, in Russia this is a rare example of high-tech sales abroad in such a large volume. But this proves that if we pose the question correctly, we are capable of much.
Boris Ivanovich, what needs to be done in order not to lose the head start gained by the Soviet rocket engine industry? Probably, in addition to the lack of funding for R&D, there is another very painful problem - personnel?
To remain on the world market, we must constantly move forward and create new products. Apparently, until we were completely pressed and thunder struck. But the state needs to realize that without new developments it will find itself on the margins of the world market, and today, in this transition period, while we have not yet matured into normal capitalism, it, the state, must first of all invest in new things. Then you can transfer the development for production of the series to a private company on terms beneficial to both the state and business...
And that’s what’s surprising! In this story by Academician Boris Katorgin, the creator of the world's best rocket engines, there is not a word about the fact that “the Americans did not fly to the Moon”! However, he doesn’t need to shout about it. It is enough to say and prove that only Russia today has the RD-170 rocket engine with a thrust of 800 tons, created in 1987 - 1988, the characteristics of which alone can ensure the flight of a spacecraft to the Moon and back. Americans don’t have such an engine today!
Worse, they cannot even organize the production of the Soviet RD-180 engine, which is twice as weak in power, the license for the production of which Russia kindly sold them...
But what about the American Saturn-5 rocket, the launch of which was observed in July 1969 by millions of people who followed the “lunar program”? - perhaps someone will say now.
Yes, there was such a rocket. And she even took off from the cosmodrome! Only her task was not to fly to the Moon, but just to show everyone that the take-off had taken place. And this should have been recorded by television cameras, as well as the eyes of all kinds of witnesses. Then the Saturn 5 rocket fell into the Atlantic Ocean. Its first stage, its head part, and the descent module, in which there were no astronauts, fell there...
As for the engines of the Saturn 5 rocket...
For a “fake flight” the rocket did not need to have any outstanding rocket engines with particularly high power! It was quite possible to get by with the engines that the Americans were able to develop by that time!
The launch of the “lunar rocket” Saturn-5, as is known, took place on July 16, 1969. On July 20 and 21, American astronauts were allegedly able to walk on the Moon and even plant an American flag on it, and on July 24, 1969, on the ninth day of the expedition, they returned very cheerfully in a descent capsule to Earth.
The cheerfulness of the US astronauts immediately caught the eye of all specialists. She could not help but cause at least bewilderment. Well, how can that be?! It can not be so!..
Here is the testimony of Russian professionals from the cosmonaut search and rescue team. The picture after landing looks like this: “The approximate condition of an astronaut is as if a person ran a thirty-kilometer cross-country race, and then rode on a carousel for several more hours. Coordination is impaired, the vestibular system is impaired. Therefore, a mobile hospital is necessarily deployed next to the landed descent vehicle. Immediately after landing, we check with cosmonauts' state of the cardiac system, blood pressure, pulse, amount of oxygen in the blood. Cosmonauts are transported in a lying position."
In other words, if the astronauts have been in low-Earth orbit for at least several days, then in the first hours after returning they are in a state of extreme fatigue and are practically unable to move independently. A stretcher and a hospital bed - this is their fate for the coming days.
This is how real cosmonauts return from being shaved:
And this is how the Americans returned, having supposedly visited the Moon and spent almost 9 days in zero gravity. They themselves bravely climbed out of the descent capsule, and without spacesuits!
And just 50 minutes later, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins cheerfully participate in a rally dedicated to their return to Earth! (But then they had quality! In 9 days they should have produced 5 kg of crap and 10 liters of urine for each person, at least! So quickly did they manage to wash themselves off?!)
Let us return, however, to the engines of the Saturn 5 rocket.
In 2013, news spread around the world: “At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it was possible to discover and recover parts of the F-1 liquid rocket engine, which fell along with the spent first stage S-IC-506 of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which was launched on July 16, 1969! It was this bundle of five F- engines 1 lifted the launch vehicle and Apollo 11 spacecraft, with its crew of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins, off launch pad 39A on its historic flight. two discovered F-1 engines, from a depth of ~3 miles.In addition to the engines, parts of the first stage structure were discovered, destroyed after falling upon impact with the water.
The first stage of the S-IC separated after 150 seconds from the moment the F-1 engines started, imparted a speed of 2.756 km/s to the launch vehicle and spacecraft, and lifted the bundle to an altitude of 68 kilometers. After separation, the first stage moved along a ballistic trajectory, rising at its apogee to an altitude of about 109 kilometers, and fell at a distance of about 560 kilometers from the launch site in the Atlantic Ocean.
The coordinates of the crash site of S-IC-506 in the Atlantic Ocean are 30°13" north latitude and 74°2" west longitude.
How the Saturn 5 rocket engines were lifted:
It is alleged that fragments of this liquid-propellant rocket engine were raised from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, which for some reason the United States sees no point in producing further today, and therefore prefers to buy Russian-made rocket engines for their needs - RD-180!
A mock-up of the F-1 engine that allegedly powered the Saturn 5 moon rocket.
Here is our famous Russian engine, which Russia is selling today to American rocket manufacturers. Don't you find anything strange in this?!
It remains for me to tell you about one more discovery, which was made in the Atlantic Ocean back in 1970. Then Russian fishermen discovered the Apollo spacecraft's descent capsule drifting in the sea without the astronauts inside. Naturally, the find was reported to Moscow, and there they decided to transfer it to the American side.
Translation of the article into Russian:
Russia says Apollo capsule has been found and will be returned A
MOSCOW (UPI) -- The Soviets have pulled a U.S. space capsule they describe as a component of the Apollo moon mission program from the ocean, and they expect to return it to American officials this weekend, state news agency TASS said.
Verification of this information with American embassy officials revealed that the Soviets had at least two weeks to study this space equipment, and American officials knew this, but the decision to return it now was a surprise.
A U.S. Embassy official said officials inspected the site Friday and could not confirm whether it was a component of the Apollo program. But he added that "from their report I get the impression that this one piece of equipment", and not a fragment of it.
The Soviets explicitly stated that they intended to load the capsule aboard the US icebreaker Southwind, which called at the Barents Sea port of Murmansk for three days on Saturday. US officials subsequently said they had asked Washington for permission to transfer.
A three-paragraph TASS statement on Friday afternoon gave the first suspicions that the Russians have some kind of American spacecraft.
"The experimental space capsule launched under the Apollo program and found in the Bay of Biscay by Soviet fishermen will be handed over to US representatives,"- it says.
"The US icebreaker Southwind will call at Murmansk on Saturday to pick up the capsule."
Before the TASS statement, the embassy announced that the Southwind would call at Murmansk and stay there from Saturday to Monday to give the crew an opportunity for “rest and entertainment.” It described the goodwill prospects of the visit and nothing more.
Asked about the TASS report, an embassy spokesman said the Soviets made the decision without notifying U.S. officials.
"Southwind is sailing to Murmansk for the reasons stated - recreation and entertainment, and I think we can be quite sure that the ship's commander knows nothing about it,"- he said. .
Of course, the Americans did not admit that the descent capsule found by Soviet fishermen was from the same “lunar rocket” that launched on July 14, 1969 and allegedly headed towards the Earth’s satellite. NASA, matter-of-factly, announced that the Russians had discovered an "experimental space capsule."
At the same time in the book "We've never been to the moon"(Cornville, Az.: Desert Publications, 1981, p. 75) B. Kaysing says: “During one of my talk shows, a airline pilot called and said that he saw the Apollo capsule being jettisoned from a large plane around the time the astronauts were supposed to 'return' from the Moon. Seven Japanese passengers also observed this incident...”.
Here is this book, which talks about a completely different Apollo descent capsule, which was dropped from an airplane by parachute to simulate the return of astronauts to Earth:
And one more stroke in continuation of this topic, which further reveals the American deception:
"This old photograph shows the Bulgarian cosmonaut G. Ivanov and the Soviet cosmonaut N. Rukavishnikov discussing the scheme for the Soyuz descent vehicle to enter the dense layers of the atmosphere. The capsule enters the dense layers of the atmosphere at a speed many times greater than the speed of sound. All the energy of the oncoming the air flow turns into heat and the temperature in the hottest place (at the bottom of the apparatus) reaches several thousand degrees!”
Among the events that the 20th century was remembered for, one of the main places is occupied by the landing of astronauts on the Moon, which took place on July 16, 1969. In terms of its significance, this event can be called epochal and historical. For the first time in history, man not only left the earth's surface, but also managed to set foot on an extraterrestrial space object. Footage of the first steps taken by man on the lunar surface spread all over the world and became a symbolic milestone of civilization. American astronaut Neil Armstrong, who instantly turned into a living legend, commented on his actions as follows: “This one small step for a man is one giant leap for humanity.”
On the technical side, there is no doubt that the Apollo program was a huge technological breakthrough. How useful the American space odyssey turned out to be for science is a matter of debate that continues to this day. However, the fact remains indisputable: the space race, which preceded the landing of man on the Moon, had a beneficial effect on almost all spheres of human activity, opening up new technologies and technical capabilities.
The main competitors, the USSR and the USA, were able to take full advantage of their achievements in the field of manned space flights, largely determining the current situation with space exploration.
Flights to the Moon – big politics or pure science?
In the 1950s, a rivalry of unprecedented scale developed between the Soviet Union and the United States. The advent of the era of rocketry promised the side that could build powerful launch vehicles a huge advantage. The USSR attached particular importance to this issue; missile technology provided a real opportunity to counter the increased nuclear threat from the West. The first Soviet missiles were built as the main means of delivering nuclear weapons. The civilian use of rockets designed for space flights was in the background. In the United States, the missile program developed in a similar way: the military-political factor was a priority. Both warring sides were also spurred on by the arms race, which, along with the Cold War, started after the end of World War II.
The United States and the USSR used all methods and means to achieve results. Soviet intelligence was actively working in the secret laboratories of the US space agency and, conversely, the Americans did not take their eyes off the Soviet rocket program. However, the Soviets managed to get ahead of the Americans in this competition. Under the leadership of Sergei Korolev, the USSR created the first ballistic missile R-7, which could deliver a nuclear warhead to a distance of 1200 km. It is with this rocket that the beginning of the space race is associated. Having got its hands on a powerful launch vehicle, the Soviet Union did not miss the opportunity to outdo its overseas competitors. It was almost impossible for the USSR to achieve parity with the United States in terms of the number of nuclear weapons carriers in those years. Thus, the only way left to achieve equality with the United States and, perhaps, to overtake overseas competitors was to make a breakthrough in the field of space exploration. In 1957, an artificial Earth satellite was launched into low-Earth orbit using the R-7 rocket.
From this moment on, not only issues of military rivalry between the two superpowers entered the arena. Space exploration has become a primary factor in foreign policy pressure on an opponent. A country that had the technical ability to fly into space a priori looked like the most powerful and developed. The Soviet Union managed to inflict a sensitive blow on the Americans in this regard. First, in 1957, an artificial satellite was launched. A rocket appeared in the USSR that could be used to fly a person into space. Four years later, in April 1961, the Americans were knocked down. The stunning news about Yuri Gagarin's flight into space aboard the Vostok-1 spacecraft dealt a blow to the pride of Americans. Less than a month later, on May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard made an orbital flight.
The subsequent American space program was very similar to Soviet developments in this area. The focus was on manned flights with a crew of two or three people. The Gemini series ships became the basic platform for the subsequent development of the American space program. It was on them that the future explorers of the Moon flew around, and on these spacecraft the landing, splashdown and manual control systems were tested. Having lost the first stage of the space race to the Soviet Union, the Americans decided to take a retaliatory step aimed at achieving a qualitatively different result in space exploration. In the high offices of NASA, on Capitol Hill and in the White House, it was decided to beat the Russians to the moon. The international prestige of the country was at stake, so work in this direction took on a fantastic scale.
The colossal amount of funds that would be required to implement such a grandiose event was not taken into account at all. Politics took precedence over economics. Through such an extraordinary decision, the United States could become unconditional leadership in the space race. At this stage, the competition between the two states could end in two ways:
- the stunning success and subsequent development of the manned flight program to the Moon and other planets;
- a devastating failure and a colossal hole in the budget, which could put an end to all subsequent space programs.
Both sides were well aware of this. The American lunar program officially started in 1961, when American President John Kennedy gave a fiery speech. The program, which received the resounding name “Apollo,” envisaged, within 10 years, the creation of all the necessary technical conditions for landing a man on the surface of the Earth’s satellite and the subsequent return of the crew to Earth. For political reasons, the Americans invited the Soviet Union to work together on the lunar program. Overseas, they bet that the USSR would refuse to work together in this direction. Thus, everything was at stake in the United States: political prestige, economics and science. The idea was to once and for all overtake the USSR in the field of space exploration.
The start of the lunar race
The USSR took seriously the challenge posed from overseas. By that time, the Soviet Union was already considering the issue of manned flights to the Earth’s natural satellite, the flight and landing of astronauts on the Moon. The work was headed by Sergei Pavlovich Korolev at the V.N. Design Bureau. Chelomeya. In August 1964, the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved the start of work on the lunar manned program, which included two directions:
- flyby of the Moon in a manned spacecraft;
- landing of a space module on the surface of the Earth's satellite.
The start of design and flight tests was scheduled for 1966. In the USA, the scale of work in this direction has become more widespread. This is evidenced by the size of the appropriations spent on the implementation of all stages of the Apollo program, which at the end of the flights amounted to a colossal amount even by today’s standards - $25 billion. Whether the Soviet economy would be able to bear such expenses is a big question. This is part of the answer to the question of why the Soviets voluntarily gave up the palm in the lunar race to the States.
The technical side of the issue related to the implementation of the lunar program represented a huge amount of work. It was necessary not only to create a huge launch vehicle capable of launching into orbit a spacecraft equipped with a lunar landing module. It was also necessary to design vehicles for landing on the Moon, capable of returning back to Earth.
In addition to the enormous amount of work facing the designers, astrophysicists had to work just as hard, who had to make the most accurate mathematical calculations of the spacecraft’s flight path to the Earth’s satellite, the subsequent separation and landing of the module with two astronauts. All developments made sense only if the crew returned successfully. This explains the number of launches that filled the Apollo program. Until the moment when astronauts landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, 25 training, test and preparatory launches were carried out, during which the work of all systems of the huge rocket and space complex was examined, starting with the state of the Saturn 5 launch vehicle in flight, ending with the behavior of the lunar module in lunar orbit.
Painstaking work went on for eight long years. The upcoming event was preceded by serious accidents and successful launches. The saddest event in the history of the Apollo program was the death of three astronauts. The command compartment containing the astronauts burned down at the ground launch complex during testing of the Apollo 1 spacecraft in January 1967. However, overall the project was encouraging. The Americans managed to create a reliable and powerful Saturn 5 launch vehicle, capable of delivering cargo weighing up to 47 tons into lunar orbit. The Apollo apparatus itself could be called a technological miracle. For the first time in the history of mankind, a spacecraft has been developed that can deliver people to an extraterrestrial object and ensure the safe return of the crew back.
The ship included a command compartment and a lunar module - a means of delivering astronauts to the Moon. Two stages of the lunar module, landing and take-off, were created taking into account all the technological operations provided for by the program. The lunar module cabin was an independent spacecraft capable of performing certain evolutions. By the way, it was the design of the lunar module of the Apollo spacecraft that became the prototype of the first orbital American space station, Skylab.
The Americans were more than careful in resolving all issues, striving to achieve success. Before the first spacecraft, Apollo 8, reached the orbit of the Moon and flew around our satellite on December 24, 1968, 7 years passed in hard and routine work. The result of the colossal work was the launch of the eleventh Apollo family ship, the crew of which eventually announced to the whole world that man had reached the surface of the Moon.
Is it true? Did American astronauts really manage to land on the Moon on July 20, 1969? This is a mystery that continues to be solved to this day. Experts and scientists around the world are divided into two opposing camps, continuing to put forward new hypotheses and create new versions in defense of one point of view or another.
The truth about the American landing on the moon - a stunning success and a clever scam
The lies and slander that the legendary astronauts - Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins - were forced to face are amazing in their scale. The skin of the Apollo 11 landing module had not yet cooled down when, along with nationwide rejoicing, words were heard that there had in fact been no landing. Historical footage of earthlings on the Moon was shown hundreds of times on television all over the world, and films of negotiations between the command center and astronauts in lunar orbit were played thousands of times. It is alleged that the spacecraft, even if it flew to our satellite, was in orbit of the Moon without performing any lunar landing operations.
Critical arguments and facts became a platform for conspiracy theories that persist today and put a question mark under the entire American lunar program.
What arguments do skeptics and conspiracy theorists use:
- photographs taken during the landing of the lunar module on the surface of the Moon were taken under terrestrial conditions;
- the behavior of astronauts while on the surface of the Moon is unusual for airless space;
- An analysis of the conversations between the Apollo 11 crew and the command center suggests that there was no communication delay, which is inherent in long-distance radio communications;
- lunar soil taken as samples from the surface of the Moon is not much different from rocks of terrestrial origin.
These and other aspects, which are still being discussed in the press, with certain analysis may cast doubt on the fact that Americans are on our natural satellite. The questions and answers that are being asked about this today allow us to say that most of the controversial facts are far-fetched and have no basis in reality. Repeatedly, NASA employees and the astronauts themselves gave reports in which they described all the technical subtleties and details of that legendary flight. Michael Collins, being in lunar orbit, recorded all the actions of the crew. The astronauts' actions were duplicated at the command post in the flight control center. In Houston, during the astronauts' journey to the moon, they were well aware of what was really happening. The crew's reports were repeatedly analyzed. At the same time, transcripts of the ship's commander Neil Armstrong and his colleague Edwin Aldrin, recorded while on the surface of the Moon, were studied.
In neither case was it possible to establish the falsity of the testimony of the Apollo 11 crew members. In each hotel example, we are talking about the precise fulfillment of the task assigned to the crew. It was not possible to convict all three astronauts of deliberate and skillful lies. To the question of how astronauts are landed on the Moon in the lunar module, if each crew member has only 2 cubic meters of internal volume of the ship, the following answer was given. The astronauts' stay on board the lunar module was limited to only 8-10 hours. The man in the protective suit was in a stationary position, without making significant physical movements. The time of the lunar odyssey coincided with the chronometer of the Columbia command module. In any case, the time spent by two American astronauts on the Moon was recorded in the logbook, in the audio recordings of the Mission Control Center and displayed in photographs.
Did humans land on the moon in 1969?
After the legendary flight in July 1969, the Americans continued launching spacecraft to our space neighbor. After Apollo 11, the 12th mission set off on its journey, which also culminated in another landing of astronauts on the surface of the Moon. Landing sites, including those for subsequent missions, were chosen with the expectation of getting an idea of different areas of the lunar surface. If the lunar module "Eagle" of the Apollo 11 ship landed in the Sea of Tranquility area, then other ships landed in other areas of our satellite.
Assessing the amount of effort and technical preparations involved in organizing subsequent lunar expeditions, one cannot help but wonder: if the lunar landing was originally planned as a scam, why, after the success achieved, continue to feign a Herculean effort by launching the remaining Apollo missions to our satellite? Especially if it carries a high degree of risk for crew members. The story of the thirteenth mission is indicative in this aspect. An emergency situation on board Apollo 13 threatened to develop into a disaster. At the cost of enormous efforts by the crew members and ground services, the ship and its living crew were returned to earth. These dramatic events formed the basis of the plot of the blockbuster feature film Apollo 13, shot by the talented director Ron Howard.
Edwin Aldrin, another person who managed to visit the surface of our Moon, even had to write a book about his mission. His books First on the Moon and Return to Earth, which appeared between 1970 and 1973, became bestsellers rather than science fiction novels. The astronaut outlined in great detail the entire history of their flight to the Moon, described all the normal and emergency situations that arose on board the lunar module and the command ship.
Further development of lunar missions
To say today that earthlings have not been to the Moon is incorrect and impolite towards the people who took part in this grandiose project. In total, six expeditions were sent to the Moon, which ended with the landing of a man on the surface of our satellite. With their rocket launches to the Moon, the Americans gave human civilization a chance to truly appreciate the scale of space, to look at our planet from the outside. The last flight to the earth's satellite took place in December 1972. After this, rocket launches towards the Moon were not carried out.
One can only guess about the true reasons for curtailing such a grandiose and large-scale program. One of the versions that most experts adhere to today is the high cost of the project. By today's standards, more than $130 billion was spent on the space program to explore the Moon. It cannot be said that the American economy was struggling with the lunar program. There is a high probability that common sense simply prevailed. Human flights to the Moon did not have any particular scientific value. The data that most scientists and astrophysicists work with today allows us to make a fairly accurate analysis of what our closest neighbor is like.
To obtain the necessary information about our satellite, it is not at all necessary to send a person on such a risky journey. The Soviet automatic Luna probes coped with this task perfectly, delivering hundreds of kilograms of lunar rock and hundreds of photographs and images of the lunar landscape to Earth.
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